Out on the Weekend

(Permanent soundtrack to the last post of the week, from the blog's second-favorite Canadian...)

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We begin this week's valedictory in the wide world of sports, where, this weekend, He shall returneth to Foxborough in the company of his newest companions, where He last was seen running for his life and throwing passes to the far suburbs lest Jerod Mayo and Vince Wilfork eat him alive and throw the scraps unto the seagulls.

Of course, running back be damned, even if his stigmata flared up on both hands, Tim Tebow probably could throw for a cool 250 against the New England secondary, which, in the fourth quarter, generally turns into a a pile of dead fish from the Sea of Galilee.

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Elsewhere, I don't care what the court rules, they can't have Claire Danes. I've never fallen for the whole "tort reform" scam, but even I have to admit that it would be a little weird to see an entire country sue a TV show. I await the action to be brought by the inhabitants of Talos IV against the estate of the late Gene Roddenberry.

Chuck Berry turned 86 on Thursday, and the man who screwed up the world in a better way than almost anyone else ever did. He gets credit for an awful lot of things — That Riff first among 'em — but never enough for his incomparable gifts as a lyricist. If you want to see where Bob Dylan got a lot of his chops, check out the second verse of "Nadine":

I saw her from the corner when she turned and doubled back / Started walkin' toward a coffee colored Cadillac / I was pushin' through the crowd to get to where she's at / I was campaign-shoutin' like a southern diplomat.

Yeats could have written those lines. And, somewhere, he wishes he did.

There has been a lot of plane travel, and train travel, and Not Being At Home recently, so a lot of reading has gotten itself done. I can recommend the new book on Ray Mancini by Mark Kriegel, who is the best writer on sports that we have, and also the new one on Revelations by Elaine Pagels, who is one of my primary intellectual crushes, and not just because she makes Ross Douthat cry into his alb. Also, too: Live by Night, the latest historical crime drama by Dennis Lehane, wherein Lehane continues to work the dark and rainy side of Doctorowland. The execution of Sacco and Vanzetti takes place off-stage in this one.

Am I really supposed to feel sorry that Alex Rodriguez's sojourn in New York is ending badly? For whom am I supposed to feel sorry? A-Rod? The Yankees? It is to laugh. And it is to laugh even louder and longer to listen to the lament of this smug, overindulged jackeen:

American society has worked hard to eliminate bigotry like this toward other groups. We should not tolerate it against the 1 percent either. You can you make a difference in this fight. Most bigotry is minimized and even eradicated when people like you stop tolerating it. In the 1980s, racial jokes in work and social life were still quite normal. Maybe they still are in parts of American culture but I don't hear them anymore. One reason is that in the 1980s, I made a conscious decision to no longer accept such prejudice in my life. Whenever someone would begin a joke that was clearly heading toward a racially focused end, I would stop them and say, "Please, I'm not interested in hearing that joke." It was very uncomfortable at first. But I did it because this was a small thing that could help create a better culture.

Anyway, I'll be back on Monday with the usual gobshitery, which probably will go heavy on the vital foreign0policy question of What Did The President Know Abot Benghazi And When Did Willard Start Lying About It? Then, off to Boca for electric Twitter machine, and same-day blog coverage of Presidential Debate III: Rise of The Romneybot. I hope Malia shows up and slaps Tagg Romney silly. Play nice, ya silly bastids, or Lebanon's gonna sue all your sorry asses.